1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wall-mounted microwave oven, and more particularly, to a wall-mounted microwave oven including a guide plate adapted to guide fumes or smoke rising toward an oven body to an exhaust suction port formed at a bottom wall of the oven body.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a wall-mounted microwave oven is installed over a gas oven range. The wall-mounted microwave oven not only performs a cooking function similar to that of general microwave ovens, but also performs a function for externally exhausting fumes or smoke rising from the gas oven range arranged beneath the microwave oven.
The wall-mounted microwave oven includes an oven body having an inner space partitioned into a cooking chamber to cook food, and a chamber receiving diverse electrical elements. Referring to FIG. 1, a wall-mounted microwave oven is illustrated. As shown in FIG. 1, the oven body 1 is provided with an exhaust fan 3 installed at a rear upper portion of the oven body 1 to exhaust fumes or smoke generated from a gas oven range 2 arranged beneath the microwave oven. An exhaust suction port 4 is formed at a bottom wall of the oven body 1 to suck the fumes or smoke rising from the gas oven range 2 in accordance with an operation of the exhaust fan 3. An exhaust path (not shown) is defined in the oven body 1 to guide the fumes or smoke sucked into the exhaust suction port 4 toward the exhaust fan 3.
A guide plate 5 is installed at the bottom wall of the oven body 1 near the front wall of the oven body 1 to guide the fumes or smoke rising from the gas oven range 2 toward the exhaust suction port 4. The guide plate 5 is hingeably mounted to the bottom wall of the oven body 1 so that the guide plate 5 is movable between a folded position and an unfolded position in accordance with a manipulation thereof by a user. When a cooking procedure is carried out using a rear heating unit 2B of the gas oven range 2, the guide plate 5 is maintained at the folded position thereof. Alternatively, when the cooking procedure is carried out using a front heating unit 2A of the gas oven range 2, the guide plate 5 is unfolded to guide the fumes or smoke generated from the gas oven range 2 toward the exhaust suction port 4 arranged at the bottom wall of the oven body 1 near the rear wall of the oven body 1.
In the above-mentioned conventional wall-mounted microwave oven, the exhaust suction port 4 is typically arranged at the rear portion of the bottom wall of the oven body 1 due to the guide plate 5 installed at the front portion of the bottom wall of the oven body 1. For this reason, effectively exhausting the fumes or smoke rising from the front heating unit 2A of the gas oven range 2 is not possible even though the exhaust function is carried out in an unfolded state of the guide plate 5.
In order to solve this problem, the exhaust suction port 4 is arrangeable at the front portion of the bottom wall of the oven body 1. In this case, however, the guide plate 5 closes the suction port 4 at the folded position thereof. As a result, the guide plate 5 is unfolded whenever the exhaust function is to be carried out, which is inconvenient. The guide plate 5 must be unfolded even when the cooking procedure is carried out using the rear heating unit 2B of the gas oven range 2.